I will never quite understand why people get upset over what good things other people get. It doesn't effect you, most of the detractors have already stated that they are confident that they will beat a scrub regardless of whether he/she has grinded out a spell blade. If you aren't playing the game cause you enjoy the game play then rethink your priorities.

I wonder if at next blizzcon players with sub 1900 ratings will have to use different water fountains.

Sure, because preventing every player from having a T6 PvP weapon is just like Jim Crow laws in the old south.

Honestly, this debate is beyond tiring at this point. Whether you are hard core or casual, you have to accept that Blizzard doesn't just hand the best of 'everything' to everyone. There needs to be some level of balance between item power, the population its available to, and how hard people have to work to get them, or it devalues them completely as a goal for people.

Otherwise, you might as well just argue for T6 weapons being given out to players when they hit 70. There is a balance to be found between the two opposite ends of the spectrum.

So many pages of people going back and forth on this topic, yet not realizing an important fact. Being restricted from the season two weapons, does not restrict you from the season one weapons. If you want to pick up a weapon for pve, yet not want to play arenas at all, by all means go do so and loot your season one weapon. But if you want the newest weapon, you have to do a bit better than mediocre. You always have armor pieces and throwing weapon slot to purchase of season two while you work your way up to a reasonable rating (personally I think around 1750).

If you can't reach 1750, then quite frankly you shouldn't be allowed to loot the best weapon. Not only does it make it easier on the healers and promote more skill-based play at lower brackets, it provides an easy to reach goal for aspiring pvpers. They can either pick up s2 armor with their weekly arena points, or save up and try to reach 1750 without the resilence gear (or have gotten the blue hwl set) and get the s2 weapon, or save up their points to get a s1 weapon (which really isn't that bad in the first place).

Congratulations! You've come up with what is very possibly the most unconstructive and overblown analogy in the history of these boards. I can only hope that a mod takes note of this marvelous accomplishment and bestows upon you the accolades you deserve.

Congrats, it's our new gmotd!

Hey you quoted the wrong guy

Lots of comments like this in this thread(in fact all through this forum)


What difference is there between a scrub who rides a guilds farm bosses to "free" loot and a scrub who rides a shitty arena rating to "free" loot.


Nothing. Except that "raiders" typically think they are beyond "Welfare epics". They aren't.

People need to stop acting like every person who happens to be in a guild that does 25 man content is somehow automatically more talented than someone who casually does arena. There are plenty of raiders who are terrible/average at the game, who then get loot handed to them within the confines of a 25 man raid, that don't "earn" anything. Just as there are plenty of terrible/average players who get S2 loot from maintaining a crappy arena rating.

The problem with blizzard introducing arena gear that are easily obtainable is that it may kill off raiding eventually.

Mmorpg works ard the concept of time investment. Having more time invested in the game should reap you better rewards(in this case gear) compared to others who played lesser. However blizzard's arena system is more about skill > time investment. It wants people with greater skill to get a form of recognition in pvp.

But this system has a problem.
Having t6 equivalent pvp weapon/armor available to almost anyone who pvps 10 games per week and stores enough point for the next season weapon. This makes raiding a sub-optimal choice for gearing up ur character with l33t purples.

What blizzard should do is make arena/pvp weapon/gear unusable in raid dungeons (10/25 mans). Since pvpers pvp and there is no use for that weapon/armor for them in pve.
That way blizzard can introduce top tier equivalent weapons but not affect pve at all.
PvE items should still be usable in pvp.

Raiding will be kept alive. As of now raiding in tbc has gone abit downhill compared to naxx days. It is not as appealing to raid for gear as it used to with the easily obtainable arena gear.

It significantly takes more time to reach the last boss of every 25 man instance than pvping. No raiding guild can invest 2-3 hours per week and expect progression. There is almost no way for a scrub to say kill illidan and loot the weapon it drops. Filtering of scrubs are done by the guild's administration. (Screening recruits, dkp etc etc)
With pve comes the randomness of loots. There is no garunteed weapon that will drop, it may take months before 1 weapon drops for a raid of 25 man.
Any guild that gets into hyjal/mt hyjal has got to be investing quite a hefty amount of time. (Consumable farming, time spent in thrash clearing, learning new encounters) Some may call this hard core.

There is also the issue of imbalance in pvp. Pvp in wow is and nv will be balanced. Some classes will always be better than others in pvp. Blizz already claimed that some classes are under represented in top pvp teams. Why should some classes have it easier to get pvp gear than others?

All this really accomplishes is punish people that are advanced in pvp but for any of numerous reasons aren't advanced in pve. It's far from unheard of for a person to be on a kick ass arena team ,so have the best arena gear available, but then aren't very progressed in pve as they only do that on the side. They now have all this really nice gear they've worked very hard to get. If they want to enjoy a different aspect of the game, Blizzard gives them the middle finger and says you can't use your good gear, go farm horribly inferior gear. You can't have much larger of a disincentive to actually branching out into other areas of the game. This is a sure fire way to hurt low level raiding, which will affect high level raiding given time from lack of fresh blood to replace the people that invariably leave.

We can debate the merits of who does or does not "deserve" certain items. Having rules as lopsided as what you mentioned is a slap in the face to pvpers. Why should highly advanced pve people be able to use their great gear in pvp, but not allow the highly advanced pvp people to use their great gear in pve? Making the restriction work both ways is a possible solution (though only with regards to actual raid gear, 5 mans and such are fair game for both.) All pvpers will have to start at the same level in pvp regardless of pve progression, and all pvers will start at the same level in pve regardless of pvp progression. I think this is a horrible solution, but it at least screws everyone equally.

Simple, cause its harder to get pve gear than pvp gear.
Pve gear is not handed out like pvp gear. Season 1 to 2 to 3 enables players to store points.

Pvp gear should remain in pvp and not mix with pve.
Why would it be a slap in the face to pvpers when in the first place pvp gear is meant for pvpers to be better at pvp not better at pve.

"It's far from unheard of for a person to be on a kick ass arena team ,so have the best arena gear available, but then aren't very progressed in pve as they only do that on the side."

This is what is killing pve. Most ppl that start the game now will have a greater incentive to go pvp and get gear than to go pve. There is no more incentive to go pve anymore.

With lesser and lesser ppl having pve as a main way of gearing themselves up, fewer ppl will be cycled in pve guilds. PvE guilds require more than 30 active raiders usually to keep it going. When players leave the pve guild, new ppl have to be replaced to enable the guild to progress. However with the pve pool of players getting lesser, quality is affected too due to the lack of pve experienced players. This will in turn affect the pve guild progress and results in either A - slow pve progression or B - Disbanding of guild due to lack of progression and ppl getting tired of constant attendance problems/raid wipes caused by new members.

"Hey, we cant really progress in pve anymore let's just play few games of arena each week and get free loot" Players will have this mentality, and this will really kill off raiding in the long run.

"We can debate the merits of who does or does not "deserve" certain items. Having rules as lopsided as what you mentioned is a slap in the face to pvpers."

It has to be slightly lopsided to pve, since arena is not about time investment = gear. It is more about skill = gear. That is what blizzard is trying to distinguish between raiders and pvpers. Removing honor grind, ranking system and implementing a battle net type matchmaking system.

When season 2 came out, most guilds cant even kill vashj yet. Hunters can buy the arena 2 bow which is as good as the vashj bow if they stored enough points in season 1. In pve, if u get the vashj bow after 2-3 months of pve and other hunters just got the pvp bow which is just as good without putting in 1/2 the time u invested. Will it not discourage pve players to move away from pve? It already is a big time sink to do raiding.
You reward raiders with the slight "fun factor" of allowing them to use pve weapons in pvp, but those at top arena teams will be decked out in pvp gear and their pvp weapon is as good as top tier pve weapons. So there will be no "pve out gearing pvp" in arenas.

And PvP itself is not balanced. Some classes have a harder time in arenas. So why should blizzard heavily reward gears in an aspect of the game which involves class vs class and is not yet balanced?

Unless you got a good rating it will take months to gear up in PvP. Due to pyramidal nature of the ladder you can imagine that most of the players are below 1600. If someone is gaining 300 Arena points per week he will need 7 weeks to get the chest piece. It may be easy but NOT FAST !

An average raid player will get 2-3 items in that time.

The Hardcore PVP'er simply couldn't exist in Vanilla WoW if they wished to remain competitive, they was forced to raid due how poorly designed the rewards from the honor farm were (Nothing better than waking up on the Wednesday after my 3 and a half month grind to realize that I needed to join a raiding guild and raid to remain competitive with PVE'ers -_-). But with the birth of the arena and the new honor rewards, unless you're a Paladin or Warrior, you're perfectly fine just doing arena full time As for the stress factor, that's debatable, I find arena a lot more stressful than raiding, but that's probably due to my almost complete apathy when it comes to raiding (zzzzzzzz) :P

I think the system itself has done a good thing, it's allowed people who never had a chance to join a guild because their gear was tiers behind what was needed, to give them an opportunity by acquiring these weapons / armor (Feral Druids,) so guilds will actually give them a spot. As for the arena system, it's had the exact same effect on me as getting my rank did back in Vanilla WoW, got me a spot on my faction's top raiding guild \o/

I raid with a 3 night a week raiding guild that has just cleared Tidewalker and am starting to hear some rumblings of "raiding is waste, maybe I should just do arenas for epics." To some people it really doesn't matter if the epics are good (or they are more interested in PvP in the first place) just the fact that they have epics is what counts.

The ability to pick and choose arena (and honor) gear also hurts on the raiding front. We have been clearing Gruul weekly for a few months now and only have had one caster weapon drop, but a number of our raiding casters have season 2 T5 equivalanet weapons. To get anything similar we will have to kill Vashj?

The time investment thing is just off a bit. I have about 3 "real" upgrades from 25 man raiding (T4 chest, T5 shoulders, Hydross Boots, much of the rest of my gear is Kara) that I have gotten from 12 hours a week of raiding since our first Ogre Council kill in mid-March.

Some of that raid time was still running Kara but let's call it 180 hours of raiding for 3 epics. Even if you count the couple of sidegrades I have takent it would get me to 5 epics (T4 shoulders and T4 pants). So I am looking at 36 hours of raiding per epic taken in 25 mans. I don't think any raider has more than 5-6 epics and I have the highest raid attendance so this seems pretty typical for our guild.

For my T5 equivalent sword (and I would probably still be using my HH rep sword if I didn't have this...) I invested maybe 10 hours of 3v3 arenas (I think it took about 10 weeks IIRC maybe 7-8 with a few 5v5s in there). So I invest 10 hours of playtime to pick up exactly what I needed for PvE (and it is the wrong choice from a PvP perspective) for one-third the play time of my PvE epic investment and at far less gold cost.

Bear in mind as well that 25 man raiding has a much higher "admistrative overhead" on the part of many people in mainting DKP sites, recruiting and managing 25 people and it really starts to get out of whack. Doesn't seem balanced to me...

If arena epics are the benchmark, Blizzard probably needs to double the output of raid loot at a minimum to keep them even close to balanced. That would bring my hour per loot for raiding down to around 18 which is only double or so my arena cost...You may say "well your not leet enough for raiding" but whatever I only run on 1500-1600 rated PvP teams as well...Doubling or tripling the cost of arena gear in points would also bring back some parity...but then some teams wouldn't get any gear before the season ends.

You are welcome to look at our data at (DKP) CWAL Ops DKP: Member Standings and (Guild Site) Main Page - CWAL Ops

The reason why PVP'ers are given such rewards is because of A. The Vanilla WoW situation where we 'shat' on and B. People who play at a decent level play pretty much completely skill and team work based, where as raiders quite simply don't have to put as much effort in either :p

If they want to do anything about weapons going to random Joe Raider (which I couldn't care less about,) they need to put a point restriction on them, who gives a crap if Joe Raider can't get enough rating to buy his weapon, he doesn't deserve it if he can't get the rating high enough, exactly the same as you was told in the original honor grind.

Doubling the price of our loot while doubling the gain rate of yours? That's fair...

Having almost full season 2 and joining a raiding guild, I have to say that I've learned raiding in PVP epics is a lot like PVPing in raid gear. It works, but not anywhere near as well as someone in the correct gear. The weapons I could see being an exception to this, but for the most part I'm consistently 7th-8th behind people wearing PVE gear of the same ilvl.

Bottom line is if you want to PVE, doing arenas may be a good way to get started but it's certainly not optimal. Then again I guess if they just want epics then it doesn't really matter.

I said one or the other.

I think increasing the PvE drop rate is preferable as otherwise low ranked arena teams are at risk of never getting anything. For WoW to be healthy both aspects of th game need to "work." The upcoming patch addresses some of that, I just don't think it goes far enough it is like a 16% increase in drops from SSC/TK.

Edit: elaborate on my point.

I see a rating cap ( eg 1900 ) as beneficial to the lower level players to get a better rating.

At the moment the 1600-1700-1800 teams have access to them and can beat the stuffing out of newer 1500-1600 teams that dont have weapons but maybe have 2-3 pieces of season gear, this advantage of well geared teams with mediocre skills stopping better skills lower geared players gaining rating will have a lower probability of occuring .

Depending on the implementation of the rating barrier ( eg the weapon has an equip requirement of a 1900 team, so you cant just buy the rating - it has to have been an active 1900 rating the previous week ) so that <1900 = no s3 weapons - this would mean an easier time for undergeared players in the lower bracket.

Yes, exactly the same as the original honor grind, generally considered to be the worst rules subsystem WoW has ever had, and under which PVP participation was a small fraction of what it is now.

If blizzard is to put a restriction on the use of arena weapons/gears to be not usable in raid dungeons, then players will choose carefully which path they want to focus more in.

This will keep pve rewarding and no matter what kind of epic is given out in arena/pvp it won't make any difference at all in pve raiding.

Maybe it is just me, but when doing pve, I want my damage to be high, I want to be able to get the best few weapons/armor out there that helps in my raiding. But new arena season weapons pops out that are alot better than the current pve gear available to me. I'll feel pretty upset that I am kind of "forced" to go pvp.

What I really wish to see is a more distinct line drawn between pvp/pve gear.

it would be stupid to make arena gear not usable in pve.

anyone who says that it isn't obviously doesn't play any melee class where weapons are horribly scaled / implemented in PVE drops.


also why can't a person do BOTH. I love to raid and I love to then arena on days/times I don't raid.

if you can't pve with arena gear, you better only get to use arena gear in arena. (oh wait have fun with that)

Assumption One: Blizzard operates World of Warcraft to make money.
Assumption Two: Blizzard operates and updates World of Warcraft to make the game fun for the playerbase, thus, earning them more money from continued subscriptions.
Assumption Three: The primary purpose of playing World of Warcraft is to advance your character, see new encounters, and socialize with other gamers. This is the 'fun' of WoW, which then earns Blizzard more money.
Assumption Four: The primary method of accomplishing Assumption 3 is gearing your character.

These are basic assumptions that everyone should be able to agree upon. So what is the core problem of the Arena Gear VS Instance Gear?

Fact One: Blizzard has explicitly stated that both PvE and PvP should be viable character advancement options.
Fact Two: Tigole (iirc) explicitly stated that they want to see people explore the content they have created.
Corollary One: Because of Fact 2, the attunement requirements for SSC and TK are lifted.
Assumption Five: Raiding is 'harder' than PvP.

Assumption 5 is probably going to boil some people's blood. Yes, there is difficulty both in Raiding and in PvP. Successful Raid Groups and PvP Arena teams craft raid class balance, skill, and gear levels to defeat the opposition (be it a player team or boss). Arena Teams require 5-10 People, where Raiding requires 25 to 40 people. This observation alone is enough for people to declare that Raiding epics should always be the end-all answer to superior gear advancement, and right now, it is.

Assumption Six: Arena Weapons are easier to obtain than Raiding weapons.

One argument I see frequently is that 'undeserving' people are obtaining high quality loot. This is partly true - if Joe Casual plays Arena for the 16 Weeks (hyperbole used) that an Arena Season is active, and manages to buy a weapon, he is definately not the caliber of player that would be required to get the equivalent weapon from Raiding. The problem comes with the definition of who and when a person is deemed 'undeserving'.

Opinion One: From my experience, most of the people labeling people as 'undeserving' are Elitist Jerks (pun intended), who simply want to maintain superiority over other players.

The question becomes then, how and when do you classify a person as undeserving? Of the following people, which seems the least deserving?

Person A: A is in a decent guild, having conquered all of Gruul's Lair and Magtheridon. He Arenas for points and obtains Uber Mindblasting Pointy Stick of the Beyondness to advance his character, and help in his travels to SSC and TK.
Person B: B is in an awesome guild, having conquered all other content in the game, and working on Illidan. He arenas to pick up off-spec items, such as a Spellpower mace (for a healing Paladin), or a 2h Sword for farming. He could even Arena for a new Healing mace, if such an item was an infrequent drop, contiuing the paladin example.

Most people are quick to judge in such a scenario.

Assumption Seven: The only universal sentiment on the matter is that people dont want really horrible players getting loot that they, the good player, took time and effort to obtain.

=======================================

Reason aside, lets look at the effects of such a move:

Do Arena Weapons trivialize content such that with their presence, the fights are significantly easier, or completely diffused? - The Answer is NO. The Season 3 Axe wont stop someone from bombing everyone with Flame Wreath, it wont stop them from say Shattering people by running to the healers during Gruul, and it wont stop them from getting hit by the noob-laser on Lurker.

Do Arena weapons help people progress faster through content? - The Answer is YES, because they can provide the extra DPS boost that is needed to (for example) deal enough damage to Void Reaver before he enrages, or gives just enough damage that a swarm of small enemies can be finished with two swings, or AoEs, instead of 3 or more, causing less damage to the raid, and less healing strain. Because of Assumption 3 and Fact 2, this is a desired outcome.

Are Arena Weapons difficult to obtain? - The answer is MAYBE. This depends on the player - the more amazing the player, the easier and quicker it is to obtain these powerful weapons. The more inexperienced player takes much longer, if at all, to obtain these weapons.

Are Arena Weapons, and Arena Gear in General better for PvE: The answer is NO. Compared to the equivalent sets and weapons, the Arena gear is inferior for PvE purposes, just as the PvE Tier Set is inferior for PvP Purposes. Another argument that appears is that Arena Gear is simply far better than what most of the raiding population can get. This is obviously true. Karazhan gear is better than L70 Blue Gear, it's fact. However, trying to claim that because Arena Gear exists that it trivializes loot from instances is a fallacy. There will always be something better. Something always will trvialize a lower instance gear item. Something always has to be the top piece of gear - it's never a tie (because that would require an exact duplicate item).

Is the Arena Restrictive? - The answer is NO. Anyone, anyone, can play in the Arena as long as they have a Level 70 Character. The same cannot be said for Raiding. While many people do participate in Raiding, like it or not, some people do not choose that option, or dont have the choice.


Now for the running topic at hand - rating restricted items. Assigning any required point total, being fixed, is a bad move. Perfect World Scenario, if each group was equally skilled, all teams would exist near the 1500 Rating due to equilibrium of a 50% / 50% - Win / Loss ratio. Point inflation could only occur if teams reformed after going below the 1500 Mark, but would have to be widespread to make any kind of dent in the equilibrium. The only viable option, should such a system be warranted, would involve percentages, such as Player X must be in the top 25% to use Powerful Item Y, simply because battlegroups differ in competition levels and ability.

The other concept to deal with is the concept of reward for time invested. An oft-quoted term is "Time Invested = Reward". The more you play the game, the more you should be rewarded. In that sense, the more you play Arena, the more you should be rewarded. To arbitrarily limit rewards even though you have incredible time invested seems to be counterproductive to Assumptions one through four.

Thus, my final conclusion is that:

• Requiring Performance in the Arena to obtain rewards at all (not just participation) is counter productive. This is somewhat true with the current system - people can play and play, and if they perservere enough, they can obtain that shiny new Axe, or shiny new caster dagger. The only item completely inaccessible to the average player is the Netherdrake Mount, which doesnt have any combat effect in PvP or PvE.
  
• The availability of arena items such that anyone with enough effort can obtain one, is beneficial for the overall game.

Thanks for the thorough explanation, Tejs. I agree wholeheartedly, but I think you will still encounter resistance from people who value the principle "undeserving players shouldn't get rewards" over the overall health of the game. After 13 pages, I still don't know how to resolve that conflict.